


Growing Older (but not up)

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt at fic_promptly: "Elizabeth/Peter, she never expected Peter to get this crotchety in his old age."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Older (but not up)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Jimmy Buffett song of the same name.

If pressed -- but only if pressed -- Elizabeth would have to admit that she'd been really looking forward to Peter's retirement from the FBI. That he thrived on the thrill of the chase was part of what made him the man she loved, but the idea of coming home to him each evening, knowing that he would always be there, made her heart soar.

Until she had to deal with the reality.

The reality was that Peter might be a little ... okay, maybe a lot ... well, words like "irascible" and "crotchety" came to mind, although she knew better than to mention them in his hearing. (What hearing he had left -- the hearing aid and his frequent tendency to "forget" to turn it on did not help.)

She had never realized that Peter had quite so many ... opinions. On everything. She threatened to call their cable company and get Fox News and CNN turned off, in the hopes that it would give him a few less things to have opinions about.

It was amusing, at first, when he started compiling dossiers on all the neighbors and setting up spy cameras in the living room. The joke started wearing thin when first one neighbor, then another showed up on the doorstep to complain, and El began to suspect that she and Peter were gaining a reputation as the neighborhood kooks.

Which was not to say it was all bad. He'd started cooking more than just pot roast; El began to delight in coming home from the museum to find the lovely scents of a new culinary experiment wafting through the house. Their dog Kahlo -- Neal had named her, and the name stuck no matter how many times Peter tried to change it to "something normal, for God's sake" -- had never been in better shape, since Peter had been taking her jogging twice a day. And Elizabeth thought she'd be willing to put up with any level of inconvenience just to know that he'd _be_ there, every night. Not on an all-night stakeout, not being tortured in some drug dealer's den of iniquity, not dumped in the East River, not any one of the hundred other nightmares that her brain had thrown at her during the many years that _she'd_ been the one to sit at home and wait.

Still. There were times when leaving for work was a relief.

"He was crotchety when he was _young,"_ Neal pointed out over lunch at a restaurant near the museum. "What did you expect?"

"I know, it's just ..." El poked at her poached salmon. "I think the FBI may have been hiding the symptoms, so to speak."

"You think he's bored?"

Neal's hair was silver at the temples, but aside from that and a distinguished web of lines around his eyes and mouth, he still looked the same as El remembered from their first meeting, when she'd shaken hands with the infamous ex-con Neal Caffrey almost twenty years ago. These days, he ran a gallery and worked part-time as a paid consultant with the FBI. Peter had occasionally intimated that he thought the gallery was a cover for something or other, but El thought it was little more than habit -- neither he nor Neal would know what to do with themselves if they didn't have an excuse to play their cat-and-mouse games.

"Not bored so much as ... I don't know. He's always been so driven. Now he doesn't have his ... his _purpose_ anymore. He's floundering, Neal."

Neal began casually juggling bread rolls. "Are you worried?"

"Yes? No? I don't know. Maybe you could ... distract him a little?" _Before I strangle him,_ she thought.

Neal caught the bread rolls one by one, and leaned forward. "Actually, there's something I've been thinking about for awhile. An offbeat idea that's been entertaining me. But I wanted to run it past you before I talked to Peter about it."

"Should I be scared?" El asked warily.

"Don't worry, it's not illegal. Or dangerous. Well, it shouldn't be, anyway."

"Tell me."

He told her.

"Not dangerous?" El said.

"Not at all. I swear."

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Well, okay, I admit that the possibility for a very small amount of danger exists. It's the tiny frisson of danger that gives it appeal."

"He's either going to fall on this like a starving man on a loaf of bread, or throw you out on your ear," El said. "The way he's been lately, I really have no idea which."

Neal grinned that sparkling grin, still the same after all these years. "Which are you hoping for?"

"Honestly," she said, "I'm not sure."

 

* * *

 

They'd planned to have Neal over that night anyway. El could hardly remember a time when Neal _hadn't_ been part of their lives: wandering in and out, sometimes reminding her of a long-lost relative they'd never known they needed, sometimes making her think more of a stray cat that showed up when it wanted to be fed and then vanished for days.

"Hi, Frida baby," Neal greeted the dog, ruffling her silky ears.

Peter looked up from sorting his files on the neighbors; the folders were spread out all over the dining room table. "Don't call her that. And shut the door; heat costs money, you know."

Neal grinned sympathetically at El as she handed him a cup of coffee; then he dragged out a chair.

"Hey, Peter. I wanted to run an idea by you."

"Illegal?"

"Peter," Neal said, trying to look shocked.

"Immoral?"

"Peter, _really."_

"Dangerous?"

"You'll never find out if you don't let me finish."

Peter folded his hands on top of the files and gave Neal what El liked to think of as his "I am one second from smacking you" look, which Neal, as usual, ignored.

"You know I still consult with the FBI from time to time. But not so much lately. Your successor in the White Collar division -- well, he's no _you,_ Peter."

Peter grinned a little, then managed to get his face straight again. "You're flattering me. That means you want something."

Neal's small shrug conceded the point. "Well, here's the thing. The gallery's pretty much running itself, and I can go weeks or months between consultations at the FBI. So I was thinking about starting a freelance consulting business."

El pretended to be absorbed in the museum's upcoming exhibit schedule and to look as if she was not listening at all.

"Consulting what?" Peter asked.

"Consulting ... whatever needs consulting. Authenticating art, testing security systems --"

"Basically what you used to do for the FBI."

"What _we_ used to do for the FBI," Neal said. "I'm looking for a partner."

"El put you up to this, didn't she."

"What? No. Tell him, Elizabeth."

El waved a hand. "I had nothing to do with it. Really."

Peter still looked deeply suspicious. "So we'd be doing ... what?"

"Whatever needs doing," Neal said cheerfully. "Acting as consultants for the FBI or other law enforcement groups. Taking jobs from art galleries and business firms. Think something like a high-end private detective agency that specializes in white collar crimes."

" _We_ wouldn't be breaking any laws, right?" Peter asked. "Or getting in the way of the actual LEOs doing their jobs. Right?"

Neal's eyes danced; he'd caught that "we" just as Elizabeth had. "Us? Peter, of course not. It's FBI all the way. We're just there to consult."

"Burke and Caffrey," Peter mused. "It could work."

Neal cleared his throat. "I believe you mean Caffrey and Burke."

"I'm the partner with more experience, so clearly --"

"Yes, but it was _my_ idea, which obviously means --"

"This one's not negotiable, Neal."

Neal looked at Elizabeth, and his grin broke free. "What about Burke, Caffrey and Burke? I think it has a certain _je ne sais quoi_ about it."

El's mouth dropped open. "What?"

"A certain something," Neal said.

"I know what it means. Neal, I have a job already."

"Oh, come on." Neal rose, caught her hand and pulled her to her feet. "Aren't you always telling me the museum job isn't challenging enough, and how much you miss the old Burke Events days? Wouldn't you like to do something challenging _and_ worthwhile with your life?"

Elizabeth laughed helplessly as he twirled her around the room, belling out her skirt and swishing the hair she'd worn short since it started turning gray. "Neal, I'll agree to anything if you'll put me down!"

"Caffrey, give me my wife," Peter said, but he was laughing too.

Neal deposited her into Peter's lap and leaned his hip on the edge of the table. "Burke, Caffrey and Burke. Which Burke is which?"

El kissed the tip of Peter's nose, and grinned up at Neal. "We'll have to keep you guessing on that one."


End file.
